National Affairs: Meanwhile, in Hyannisport

The Kennedy enclave at Hyannisport, Mass.—usually swarming with dogs, children, bicycles and softball teams—was strangely silent last week. The bright green lawns stretching from Jack’s and Brother Bob’s homes to Father Joe’s oceanfront manse were deserted.

For Jackie Kennedy, left behind on Jack’s order because she is expecting her second child in November, things were just about the way she liked them best.

She and Caroline, 2^, stayed near home, swam and sunned themselves. She got her first real news of Jack’s progress when an excited painter rushed in to tell her that Jack had won Pennsylvania’s big block of votes in caucus.

During the convention Jackie switched on a rented TV set, but put most of her attention into a painting as a gift for Jack when he got home. Its theme: Jack in a John Paul Jones three-cornered hat marked “El Senatore,” striking a stiff Napoleonic stance in the stern of a small dory with other members of his family crowded behind him. (“I’ve got to get nine Kennedys in that boat with him.”) For the big night, Jackie’s stepfather, Hugh D. Auchincloss, her mother, half brother and half sister drove to Hyannisport from Newport, watched doggedly through the nominating speeches, floor demonstrations and roll call while Jackie painted. Jack called just before the balloting and just after, but in the quiet mood of Hyannisport Jackie didn’t grasp that he had won until her mother and stepfather came over and kissed her.

Jack’s promise, as he led the way to Hyannisport for a family gathering this week, was a vacation for two alone and away from the telephone. “He says three weeks,” sighed Jackie, “but he can’t possibly mean more than two.” Hardly had she spoken when the fence people moved in to build a high wooden fence around the open Kennedy property to keep out the crowds, and the telephone men arrived to install a special switchboard—connected to another in Hyannis, where some 30 correspondents and nine Kennedy staffers would take up residence during Jack’s vacation.